


Stalemate (and Other Tales of Domestic Life)

by aelangreenleaf



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Humor, One Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelangreenleaf/pseuds/aelangreenleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is locked in an endgame with a ruthless foe. Or, otherwise put, Sherlock Holmes tries to get his son to eat his vegetables. [An ongoing series of crackfic drabbles]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stalemate

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of interconnected drabbles - they are not in chronological order, and will bounce around in time from chapter to chapter.

**  
**

Sherlock Holmes is locked in an endgame with a ruthless foe.

His opponent stares at him, steely-eyed, from the other side of the table. They'd been caught like this for what seemed like ages, neither one of them giving ground, neither one of them willing to concede defeat. To give in would be to give up, to admit to weakness, something both of them were absolutely loathe to do.

"No," grumbled his foe, his face split by a frown stretching across his features.

"Yes," counters Sherlock, his own expression a mirror of the one across from him.

"I don't want to," says the other, crossing his arms in front of him to make his point.

Sherlock sighs. "You have to."

"Why?"

Sherlock considers this a moment before answering. "Because it's good for you."

"I had vegetables yesterday," his opponent insists, glaring down at the plate before him as he speaks. "Mum says I'll get scurvy, but it doesn't happen that quickly. So why should I eat them?"

 _Fair point_ , Sherlock thinks to himself, but he won't let his adversary win that easily. "Vegetables are an integral part of the daily recommended intake for a child your age. Therefore, it is advisable to follow guidelines and consume your daily quota of leafy greens."

The boy in front of him cocks his head to the side and considers this. "They are only guidelines. Not rules. It's a voluntary program."

It's in moments like this that there truly is no denying this child's paternity. "Your mother requested that I ensure that you eat your vegetables," he says, attempting to appeal to the boy's sense of responsibility.

The boy blinks at him. "It was only a request."

Sherlock sighs, yet again. "Eating your vegetables will enable us to overcome this impasse and get back to the puzzle we were working on earlier. Wouldn't that be more enjoyable than debating this issue with me?"

The boy grins. "No. I like debating with you. Mum never debates with me - she just usually gets frustrated and takes my puzzles away. But you won't do that."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him. "How do you know that?"

The boy rolls his eyes. "Because you like doing them as much as I do, Dad."

Sherlock considers this. "True," he finally admits out loud. "I propose a compromise then: if you eat your broccoli and carrots, I will eat the cauliflower."

The boy smiles even more, triumph in his eyes. "I accept your terms."

"Good," nods Sherlock, inwardly relieved at the resolution of their conflict, and they each set upon their vegetables, each occupied with their own task.

* * *

Molly Hooper nudges the door to her flat open with one foot, balancing several different sacks filled with her shopping between her hands. She steps inside the flat gingerly, surveying the premises for recent signs of fire or explosions. She'd come home once after work one day to find the drapes a smoldering ruin, a victim of one of their more... interesting experiments.

Happily, she spots them both on the ground, hunched over a large amount of scattered puzzle pieces, staring intently down at the half-completed puzzle before them. She remarks to herself how much they both look so alike, two heads of solid black hair, two sets of lanky legs and arms...

"I see you ate your vegetables," she tells her son, as she sets her sacks down.

Two sets of luminous blue eyes turn up to look at her. "We reached a – compromise," says the boy slowly.

Molly sighs. "Emerson, I told you..."

"It was his idea!" the boy protests, pointing to the man beside him.

She turns to Sherlock. "You couldn't just-"

The detective locks his eyes with hers. "It seemed simpler to agree on an outcome that would suit us both."

She stares at him for a long moment, before closing her eyes and willing herself calm again.  _Why I ever agreed to let him father my child..._ she thinks to herself, before sending that thought away and opening her eyes once more.

She kneels down on the ground beside the two of them, resigned to her fate. "What puzzle are you working on?" she asks, and she spends the rest of the afternoon sandwiched between her two favourite males, working on puzzles and thinking up new ways to try and get her son to eat his vegetables.


	2. Playground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a silly series of drabbles - enjoy!

"Ready?"

Sherlock looks up to the source of the voice, spotting the smiling face of a black-haired little boy. "Emerson, don't proceed too quickly down, the rocks at the bottom may-"

He is interrupted by a squeal of laughter and an accompanying thump as the small figure launches himself down the slide, a blur of black curls and red jacket and arms thrown up in the air. Sherlock barely has time to kneel down by the bottom of the long blue tube, extending his arms to catch his son as he slams into his arms.

They tumble backwards, Sherlock having lost his purchase with his remarkably grip-less shoes (he refused to dress in casual pants or – god forbid –  _trainers_ ). The child laughs euphorically as they hit the ground, protected from harm by landing on his father's chest.

"Again!" yells out Emerson, his blue eyes gleaming with excitement.

Sherlock reaches up and lifts his son out of the way as he makes to bring himself upright again. He looks down at the boy quizzically. "You've been down the slide three times now; wouldn't you rather explore the other playground equipment?"

The boy only smiles up at him. "Come with me!"

Sherlock blinks. "Down the slide?"

Emerson grins even more. "Yes!"

He looks up and studies the long tube with a critical eye. "The dimensions of the slide aren't made to accommodate a grown man, Emerson," Sherlock replies, frowning as he completes his survey. "We would most likely get... stuck."

"We won't," answers the boy confidently, reaching out and taking a hold of his father's hand, directing him towards the equipment.

Sherlock gives the slide one last appraising look before he follows his son up into the play structure, taking care to duck under the bars and the wooden beams (and really, what was this – a playground or a cleverly disguised death trap?).

* * *

Molly Hooper is on her way home from work, exiting the tube station and continuing on foot the last few hundred meters home. She smiles as she breathes in the spring air – it had been a long, cold winter- happy that the sun was out and that she finally could leave the house without putting her wellies on. She's already pulled out the spring-time clothing for Emerson – thank god her friend Eliza had passed on her son's clothing, she should have known that any offspring of Sherlock Holmes would grow like a bloody weed.

She rounds the corner at the end of her street, nearing home, but finds herself distracted by shouts of joy from the nearby park... shouts that sounded very familiar...

"Sherlock?" she exclaims as she comes close enough to spot his tall figure whizzing down the slide, Emerson held tight in his lap. They are both laughing, laughing like she's never seen before – Sherlock's face a bright and happy beacon, his son's features mimicking his perfectly.

"Mum!" cries out Emerson as the pair reach the ground. He makes his way over to her, launching himself into her arms.

"Come and try the slide! I even got Dad to try it," he tells her excitedly, a familiar look of pride rising up in his eyes.

She stares incredulously at the man across from her. "Yes... I s-see that," she replies uncertainly, trying to ascertain if Sherlock was of sound mind after all.

"How on earth did he convince  _you_  to go down a slide?" she asks, still full of disbelief. She locks eyes with the man across from her, quite surprised by this turn of events.

And then Sherlock grins at her, one of those rare and fleeting and precious grins, and she still feels that same flutter of nerves that come over her whenever he smiles like that, even though she knows he can't possibly feel for her the way that she feels for him (but she's gotten quite good at burying those feelings deep down, most of the time).  "The same way that I'm going to convince you," he tells her, his eyes twinkling devilishly, reaching forward and grabbing her hand. He pulls her forwards towards the play equipment even as she feigns her protest, her son laughing in her arms and Sherlock still grinning, as they make their way upwards and each take their own turn to tumble down the slide.


	3. Firsts

Nine hundred and twenty six days after he fell from the roof of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Sherlock Holmes comes back to the world.

Two days later, he meets his son for the first time.

It isn't exactly a surprise – though he'd been otherwise occupied chasing Moriarty and Moran and their minions for nearly three years, he'd still kept his tabs on the people in his life as best he could. He got word of John's wedding to the auburn-haired lawyer Mary Morstan; he'd caught wind of Lestrade's promotion and reconciliation with his wife; he'd even heard mention of Mrs. Hudson's new suitor, a mild-mannered butcher from down the road.

And, of course, Molly.

He'd heard she was pregnant, and it wasn't exactly a mystery how the maths worked out on that one. An entirely spontaneous and adrenaline-fuelled encounter that night after the fall, and six months later when he had, between dodging bullets and double-crossing assassins in Istanbul, received notice that she was 25 weeks along in her gestation, he figured it out almost instantly. However, the idea had remained theoretical, academic – so he'd filled the information away and concentrated on bringing Moriarty's network down.

But now… now there was a not-so-theoretical baby in front of him, staring at him with eyes that looked eerily similar to his own.

Molly looks over at him, her features wrought with nervous energy. "Uh, so – this, this is Emerson," she says softly, bouncing the baby on her knee, his little hands wrapped around her fingers as he kept on looking at Sherlock.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at the pathologist. "Emerson?"

She blushes, still anxious. "It was my father's name," she replies.

John's here with them too, in 221B, trying and failing to disguise how flabbergasted he is at the revelation that not only had Sherlock engaged in a form of sexual activity with another human being, but that the human being in question was Molly Hooper,  _and_  that Molly Hooper's twenty-month old son had Sherlock Holmes for a father. Sherlock had grinned when he'd informed his friend; the look on the doctor's face had been  _priceless_.

"He has your nose," Sherlock remarks objectively, studying the chubby features of the child in front of him. "My hair – a dominant trait, of course – but your mouth and chin. Eyes have stayed rather blue – have they faded much since birth?"

"N-no. No, they've been that blue all along."

Sherlock nods. "Quite interesting. When did he learn to walk?"

Molly tries to hide her confusion at this line of inquiry, but he can see right through her, transparent as always. "At ten months."

He nods again, more firmly this time. "Impressive. Fine motor skills?"

"Quite good, especially for his age. He's very good at stacking blocks, as well as using dishes and cutlery. Hasn't spoken a word yet, though."

He arches an eyebrow at this. "Really?"

She nods, leaning down to place an absent-minded kiss on the top of her son's head. "No. I know he's capable – he babbles in his sleep well enough, but he still doesn't say anything while awake."

Sherlock leans back in his chair, still studying his miniature doppelganger in front of him. "In some children with above average intelligence quotients, vocalization of words comes much later than for the average child."

Molly actually rolls her eyes at this, and Sherlock is amused to see that motherhood has, at the very least, improved her self-confidence somewhat. "Yes, Sherlock, I am aware of that. I'm still a doctor, after all."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock can see John hide a grin behind his hand.

Suddenly, the boy lets go of his mother's fingers, and extends his arms out towards Sherlock. Molly quickly looks up to the detective, her eyes wide, nervous.

"Do – do you want to hold him?" she asks timidly.

Sherlock looks across to Molly, and then to John, remarking the similarity in their expressions – they were each looking at him like he was a ticking time bomb, about to go off at the drop of a hat. Sherlock sighs. He might be a sociopath, but he's not inhuman.

"Yes," he answers simply.

Molly stands and brings her son over to him, and he can see she's holding her breath, perhaps unconsciously, but anxious all the same. He can't blame her – this is her offspring, her young, her biological contribution to the world, and like all female mammals, there is a biological imperative to protect her investment, the labour of her hard work and time.

Also sentiment, he supposed as an afterthought. That too.

She passes the child over to him, and Sherlock fights the impulsive to freeze – he'd only ever held a child once, when Lestrade had brought his daughter to a Christmas function at the Yard, and Sherlock had simply grabbed the child and passed her over to the next person, Anderson and Donovan laughing at his abject discomfort.

The boy weighs more than he thought he would, and he settles the baby on the edge of his knee, resting the weight on his legs. He is keenly aware of John and Molly's eyes on him; in fact, Molly is still hovering at his side, a tense and nervous shadow looming above him.

He snaps his head around to glare at her. "I'm not going to eat him, Molly," he tells her pointedly, and she doesn't answer, simply opening her mouth once as if to speak, thinking the better of it, and seating herself down once more.

And when he looks back down to Molly's son, something's changed.

The toddler is looking up at him now, blue eyes locked with their inheritor's, staring intently. He reaches out a little hand to grab one of Sherlock's long fingers, wrapping his tiny digits around the much larger one.

"Oh," breathes Sherlock softly, a strange feeling settling in the pit of his stomach, the air in his lungs suddenly escaping from him, leaving him breathless in its wake. Sentiment, perhaps? Some sort of emotion associated with this moment? The thought unnerves him, startled by this sudden onset of emotionality, and he gently pries his finger out of the child's grasp, handing the child over to Molly.

She looks somewhat disappointed, but hides it quickly, swinging her son up into the air above her, making faces as the baby squeals with laughter. She gets to her feet and settles the boy into the space between the bottom of her hips and the edge of her ribs, balancing the toddler with only one arm.

"Well," she starts somewhat awkwardly, her eyes darting up to meet Sherlock's, then looking back down again. "I guess we'll be off."

John's on his feet too, getting the door for Molly, smiling at the baby, ruffling the soft black hair on the top of his head. "It was a pleasure seeing you both, Molly," he says kindly.

"You too, John," she answers, smiling back. She turns to look to Sherlock, hesitates, and then shakes her head almost imperceptibly. "See you around, Sherlock?" she asks tentatively.

He nods once, and she moves to leave, swinging her bag up onto her shoulder as she makes to step through the door.

"Wait!" he calls out impulsively, taking three long strides to the doorway. "Wait."

He reaches out a hand hesitantly, almost shyly, and drops it gently onto her son's –  _his son's_  – head. The hair is soft, so soft, a tiny mop of black curls over his white, creamy skin. The boy looks up at him, blue eyes so warm and innocent, and Sherlock feels that tug at the edges of his stomach again, even more insistent than before.

"Could – could I come by tomorrow? Say, six o'clock?"

Molly's face breaks into an expressive and entirely genuine grin. "Absolutely," she replies. 

"Good," he says, and he smiles a little, his stomach still fluttering, entirely uncharacteristically. "See you then."


	4. Watchful Eye

His son is twenty -five months old when he watches him for the first time.

Molly comes bursting in through the door, her hair dishevelled and her eyes wide with panic. Her arms are wrapped tight around Emerson, looking remarkably calm, as if his mother routinely rushed him around from place to place in a rabid panic.

"Sherlock!" she gasps, trying to regain her breath. "I need your help."

He carefully puts down his bow and violin. "Yes?"

"I've been called into work, and the nursery isn't open this time on a Sunday, and I'm really, really stuck – would you and John mind watching Emerson for me?"

He looks over to his son, who is looking over to him, blue eyes locking with their mirror images. "Yes, that would be fine," he replies, closing his violin case. No more composing tonight, it would seem.

Her tight and stressed features collapse into total relief. "Oh, thank you," she sighs, setting her son down on the floor as she makes to slide the bag off of her shoulder. "John!" she calls out, rummaging through the bag. "John!" she repeats a moment later, looking up from her search, her eyebrows knitted in concern.

Sherlock takes a seat in his armchair, watching as the toddler in front of him picks up one of the wedding magazines Sarah had left lying around, and smiles as the boy brings it up to his mouth, gnawing on one of the corners. "John's gone out – he's off… somewhere, with Sarah," Sherlock answers calmly, still studying the child in front of him.

Suddenly, Molly stops moving. She looks up at him, her face caught somewhere between panic and horror. "He's – he's not here?" she breathes, nervous.

Sherlock rolls his eyes at her. "No, he's not, Molly."

"Oh, well, maybe I should-" she starts, anxious again.

He sighs loudly, and stands from his chair. "I'm not going to kill your son, Molly Hooper. I am perfectly capable of taking care of a two-year old toddler," he pauses for a beat, and then continues. "You feed them raw meat, correct?" he finishes, deadpan.

Molly just looks at him, her mouth agape.

He reaches forward and takes the bag from her grasp. "Go to work, Molly. I promise to return  _our_  son intact to you when you return."

She starts to move towards the door, but hesitates halfway there. "I-" she starts, then pauses.

"Go!" he tells her, and she nods once, resigned to her fate. She bends down quickly and plants a kiss on her son's cheek, as he giggles in her arms.

"See you in the morning," she says to Sherlock, before stealing once last glance before she sweeps out the door.

As the door swings shut, silence returns to the flat, as father and son study each other, each fascinated by the other.

"So, Emerson," begins Sherlock, regarding his offspring with a critical eye. "Do you enjoy the violin?"

* * *

 

An hour into her shift, she can't help herself – she sends a text to Sherlock, and then watches her phone carefully for a response.

Five minutes later, her phone vibrates on the counter next to her, and she nearly falls in her rush to pick it up.

_Children are quite curious about electrical sockets, aren't they?  
Stop fussing and get back to work.  
SH_

She resolves to never text him again.

* * *

 

At six fifteen in the morning, Molly steps off of the bus on Baker Street and makes a beeline for 221B. She fights the urge to take the steps two at a time, knowing that Mrs. Hudson is most likely still asleep. She nearly breaks her finger getting her key in the lock, and bursts through into the sitting room, her eyes searching for a sign –  _any sign_  – that would confirm her son's continued existence.

Nothing.

Puzzled, she turns to look over at Sherlock's bedroom door. She'd never stepped foot into the room, and had previously considered it to be nearly a thing of legend, a mythical place where Sherlock supposedly slept, like all other mortals.

The door was open a few inches, and she steps over to it lightly, pressing her palm gently on the wood, pushing it open lightly.

And then she can't help the smile that splits her face, wide and happy.

Her son is asleep on the bed, dressed in his pajamas (the top on the correct way, and everything!), nestled under the blankets. Sherlock is next to him, sprawled on top of the covers, his body angled towards his son, one hand placed protectively on his son's chest.

She watches for a moment to confirm that they are both still breathing (and yes, they really, truly are…), before heading over to the sofa in the living room, more than content to wait for them to both wake up.

 


	5. First Date

"That was a wonderful film," she tells him, smiling up at him as they exit the theatre. "What made you choose that one?"

_Based on the interests you've expressed to me in the past combined with your taste in clothing, hairstyle, and choice nail polish colour, I determined that you would most likely enjoy_   _a period drama set the American southwest over the third sequel to a film based on the exploits of a crime-fighting zombie._ But he doesn't say of this, of course; he's learnt (unlike someone else he knows) to keep those kind of answers to himself.

"It seemed like something you would enjoy," he tells her, returning her grin.

They walk down the pavement together, close but not quite touching, still in that awkward state of a first date. He's known Rebecca a long time – they went to grammar school together – but it's still foreign to him, to them both, this whole concept of asking someone out on a date. He's enjoying it so far – the combination of nerves with excitement, fear with happiness. It's like nothing he's ever felt before...

"Emerson?" she calls out next to him, and he directs his attention back down to her. She looks nervous, uneasy, unsettled.

"What is it?"

"Look, I – I don't want to alarm you, but I think- I think that man behind us was also in the theatre with us," she whispers to him, her hand touching lightly on his arm before slipping away again. She casts an anxious look over her shoulder, and he doesn't have to join her to know exactly what he'll see.

Her touch makes his heart race just a little faster, but her words make him frown. "Yes, I know," he tells her. "Don't – don't worry about him. Shall we go and get a kebab before I take you home?" he says, switching tracks abruptly, internally seething. He sighs and wills himself to take a deep breath. He'll deal with this later.

* * *

 

An hour later, he makes sure to slam the door when he comes in from the street, letting the noise echo his wrath. He takes the stairs two at a time, bounding up to the second level, swinging the door open to 221B. Two long strides and he is standing in the middle of the sitting room, eyes searching for one figure in particular.

"Dad," he calls out, his voice reduced to a growl. No answer.

"Sherlock!" he yells out, exasperated now, the irritation having built up in him the whole walk over from the kebab shop to here.

"Yes?" a voice answers from around the corner, Sherlock emerging from the kitchen looking remarkably calm. "What is it, Emerson? And please – do keep your voice down, this isn't a football pitch."

Emerson scowls at his father. "What do you think you were doing?"

"Doing what?" answers Sherlock innocently, crossing over to his violin and picking the instrument up.

His son narrows his eyes at him. "You followed me and Rebecca. On our date. Our  _first_  date."

"Ah, yes," replies Sherlock nonchalantly, as if it were custom for a father to stalk his teenage son out on his romantic liaisons. "I was out collecting data, of course."

"Data?" exclaims Emerson exasperatedly. "Collecting data on my  _girlfri-_ "

Sherlock's eyebrows rise immediately at the mention of the term, and Emerson quickly cuts himself short. "My  _date_ ," he corrects himself, not letting his father have the satisfaction.

Sherlock brings up his bow, resting the tip against his jaw. "And-?"

"And?" sputters Emerson, exasperated beyond belief. He wants nothing more than to rip that stupid bow out of his father's hands, to smash that damned violin into a thousand pieces. (But, as the rational and logical part of him well knows, that instrument is a Stradivarius, and would cost him more money than he could ever hope to possess).

His father doesn't say anything for a long moment and so, feeling utterly defeated, Emerson simply throws his hands up in frustration and collapses onto the sofa, his long arms and legs sprawling over the fabric. He scowls at the ceiling, directing his entire wrath at the plaster above.

"Emerson," his father starts, his voice low and soft.

"What?" grunts the teenager, crossing his arms now, still upset.

"I – I did not want to see the results of this dating experience mirror those of your last one."

Emerson ponders this for a moment, confused, and then sits up. He directs his gaze to his father, who had put away the violin and is now simply staring out the window, lost in thought.

"What – you mean Julie?"

He can see his father nod, only once. "You... were hurt by the outcome of that experience. I simply wished to collect my own data, to make certain that you weren't... affected like that again."

And then the realization dawns on him. His father, while a brilliant researcher and an exceptional investigator, is possibly the most emotionally incompetent individual he's ever met. He's seen his father (over the telly, of course) yell at widows, bully witnesses, and scoff at children. By his mother's own admission, the sole reason that his father had ever even spoken to Dr. Molly Hooper was in order to obtain his own private access to mortuary specimens.

However, underneath that egotistical, smug, self-serving, and morally indifferent exterior Emerson knows there a different man underneath. A man who threw a man out a window for touching a finger on his landlady, a man who jumped off a roof to save his friends, a man who'd loved Emerson the best he could from the earliest time that he can remember.

A man who was, above all else, just trying to protect his son.

Emerson's face softens then, and he can feel the anger seep out of him. He's still annoyed – a seventeen year old boy does not require the supervision of his father while out at the cinema with his date, but if that's the worst thing he has to deal with, well, that's okay.

He stands up from the sofa, and crosses the floor to his father, laying a hand on the other man's shoulder gently. "Thank you," he murmurs softly, and Sherlock just nods.

"But," the boy continues, his face breaking into a half-smile, "don't  _ever_ do that again."

Sherlock doesn't say anything, simply returning his son's touch, before reaching down to pick up his violin once more.

"I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?" calls out Emerson, moving towards the door, headed back to his mother's flat.

"Of course," answers Sherlock. "And Emerson?" he says, turning to face the boy.

"Yes?"

"She was lying about the film. Judging the both the sticker on her mobile case and the way she responded to the trailer for that upcoming space western film, she would have preferred the zombie feature after all."

All Emerson can do is groan and shake his head, the sound of the violin guiding his exit out of the flat and to Baker Street beyond.

 


End file.
